If you’ve finally decided to start selling ads on your WordPress blog, you either signup for an advertising network like Google Adsense or sell ads directly on your own.

125 x 125 button advertising has become a rage with almost every blog / site selling advertisement. Out here at Weblog Tools Collection, we use OIO Publisher for this. However, if you’re not interested in purchasing the plugin, then WP125 is an excellent choice for the same.

What is WP125?

The WP125 plugin is designed to make it easy to manage 125×125 banner ads on your blog. The plugin adds a new “Ads” menu to the WordPress admin, featuring submenus for tweaking display settings and adding and removing ads. It’s very customizable, allowing you plenty of options for displaying the ads. It can optionally track the number of times the ads are clicked. The best part is you don’t have to count forward on your calendar anymore. You can just set how long an ad should run, and it will figure out the end date for you, and it will take the ad down automatically. The plugin does a lot to make it easy for you to manage your 125×125 ads quickly so you can get back to what’s really important: Blogging.

Features:

One or two column ad display, and support through template tags to implement your own unconventional design.

Show as many ads as you want, and in either manual or random order

Keep track of how many times an ad is clicked

When creating a new ad, you don’t have to calculate the end date yourself. Just input how many days you wish the ad to run for, and the correct date will be applied. The ad will be automatically taken down when the time comes.

When an ad run is over, the record is archived on the Inactive ads screen, so you can check on the final click count, or revive the ad for another run.

When an ad slot is empty, a placeholder ad of your choice will be displayed. This could be a “Your Ad Here” image linking to a page with statistics and pricing, or an affiliate link.

Optionally receive email notifications when an ad expires. Useful if you send follow-up messages to advertisers, or if you just want to stay in the know.

Our Review:

Getting started with WP125 is easy. Download the plugin from the repository and install it on your WordPress blog.

The plugin creates a new Ads menu that you can use to configure all settings. You can select the number of ads you want to sell as well as if you want to stack them in one or two columns.

The next step is to integrate them into your blog template. You have two options for this. One is to use <?php wp125_write_ads(); ?> where you want to display the ads. I suggest putting this into your sidebar.

If you don’t like the one or two column setting, you can choose to custom layout your advertisements. Use <?php wp125_single_ad(num); ?> where num is the number of the ad you wish to display.

Overall this is a really good plugin that will get you started with selling adverting on your blog. There are several features that can be added to this.

The author has the following plans:

The ability to recieve email notifications a few days in advance of an ad expiring, instead of just the moment the ad expires and is taken down. This will allow you to contact the advertiser and send a follow-up before the ad is taken down. The number of days before the advance notice is configurable.

Some changes are being made to make the plugin a little more friendly under WordPress 2.7. A few usability tweaks, mainly, but they will improve the workflow noticeably.

The ads will have alternating CSS classes applied to them, in the fashion of the WordPress “oddcomment” class. This will enable even greater flexibility in your custom styling if you wish.

One more option that can be added is the creation of ad slots. This will ensure you don’t need to use the code for displaying single ads all over but instead use a code for ad slots.

I know the plugin is called WP125, but it would be great to see added support for other banner sizes including the popular 468×60 etc.

Do you sell advertising on your blog? If so, what service do you use for the same?

Are you using WP125? What is it that you love about the plugin? And what is it that you would love to see improved? If you’re not using WP125, which plugin are you using for advertising?

I have read good things about OpenX. While their site makes note of an OpenX WordPress plugin, it’s not been updated and it did not make it into the WordPress.org plugin directory. Are you using their plugin yourself? Care to share feedback on it?

Yes, I’ve used the plugin for a while now. The only addition I’d like to see is the ability to place javascript code (or any code really) instead of the normal img url so that things like 125×125 adsense code can be used as well.

I tried this plug-in offline just now, then i saw there were a review for this plug-in on my online dashboard, and took me here.
After trying it on my offline site, i will apply it to my real on-line line. I like this plug-in a lot, and i look forward to see the new feature / version which has a capability to manage 300x 250, and 480 x60 instead of 125×125.

Thank you for your review. I have had a few requests to have support for other ad formats. I have considered it, but I’m not sure how I would implement it. Perhaps in the future, once I’m sure I have the core functionality (125×125 format ads) fully perfected. I have much planned for this plugin in the future, and it’s gained a significant following.

There are still some rough edges here and there, which I have been working to fix, and there’s a steady stream of feedback coming to my inbox.

Coming in the next release will be some of said rough-edge fixing, as well as localization support, with a couple of translations already secured.

The problem is from a UI standpoint. It’s something that I need to plan out carefully to avoid messing up the ease of use of the plugin. If you look at something like OpenX or Google Ad Manager, you’ll note that there’s a quite larger barrier for entry. There’s a lot more for a user to learn. I intend to keep things simple.

I am pretty much sure that the feature will make it into the plugin eventually, but I have other things higher-up on the plugin’s to-do list that need taking care of first.

I’ve not tried this plugin yet as I’ve only recently put adverts on my blog. I do notice that you say you have to put code in your sidebar? It’s a pity it doesn’t come with a widget, which would make it easier to set up.

From the OIO Publisher FAQ:
Can I give OIOpublisher to my friends?
You may not in any way, shape, or form distribute or give OIOpublisher out. The license for OIOpublisher extends to you and yourself only.

To clarify – I’m not against non-GPL software or plugins or themes – far from it, but the license has specific points that are incompatible with the GPL license, the fact that the “interface” to WordPress is released under the WordPress license seems to me like as much a “get around” (to use other peoples words) as premium theme developers releasing their css and images under a different license.

The license says that only the code that links to WordPress is released under WordPresses lice, but the OIO publisher code itself isn’t – seems like a mess of a license to me.

This plugin is a great advertisement management service, and simple + easy to use! I have had OIO on my site for a while, but had to many compatibility issues with other plugins, so I switched back to WP125, and helped redwall with the idea for alternating CSS classes. Very good plugin!

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